Thursday, June 26, 2014

Today it's my turn to share a tutorial over at the La-La Land Crafts Inspirational blog and I decided to create a shadow box wall hanging embellished with versatile die-cuts from La-La Land Crafts.

You can find the tutorial at the La-La Land Crafts blog and I'm duplicating it here, on my personal blog as well.

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To tell you the truth, I have a circle cutter (both by Martha Stewart and by EK Success), but after throwing several sheets of cardstock away without getting one even circle, I decided to use an “oldie but goodie” pair of compasses. :)
So, in any way which is comfortable for you, prepare 3 circles of the 6” diameter and 1 template of the same diameter (I used a regular printing paper for that).

Take the template piece and fold it in half, then turn 90 degrees clockwise and fold again:

This is how we can easily find the center of the circle. Take a needle tool and poke a hole in the middle, where the folded lines meet:

Take one of the 3 circles and place the template piece on top, try to match two of the circles as precise as possible (this shouldn’t be really hard, though we are talking about the same diameter circles here) J Pole the hole again, to “transfer” it to the bottom circle.

Take a pair of compasses, and using a ruler measure 2 1/4". Draw a circle of this radius on one of the 6” circles. Cut it out to get a “ring”:

Cut the snips of about ¼” on both of the scored sides (on the 3 stripes):

Take one of the circles and embellish to your taste. I’ve stamped the edge and distressed it with the Vintage Photo Ink:

To this circle we will add two eyelets and a thread, so that we will be able to hang our shadow box on a wall. So… Mark the places where the eyelets will be, and punch holes of the corresponding size (matching the size of the eyelets). Pull one end of the thread through the hole and leave a “tale” of about 1”. The thread I took was about 8” long, but again, everything depends on how long you want your thread to be.

Holding the tale from the back side, place an eyelet from the front to secure the thread at its place:

This is how it should look like from the back side before you’ve set the eyelet:

And after you’ve set it:

Repeat the process for the second eyelet:

Secure the tales with the clear tape:

Take another circle and glue it down to the one with the eyelets (on the side where the tales are):

Back to the “ring” piece. Stamp it and distress (or embellish with the designer paper) according to your taste:

Take one of the strips, fold the snipped parts and curve the strip with your fingers in the following way:

We will attach this strip to the inside part of the ring and this way will start to form our shadow box. Apply the blue bit by bit, and glue the strip down, paying attention to the edges, try to keep them as round as possible.

** I use a quick dry adhesive by Scotch, but I suppose you can use any other glue you like to work with, just be patient and don’t hurry with this step.

When the strip will be about to end, take another strip and glue the edge of it to the first one:

Finish forming the inside part of the shadow box, and cut the access of the second strip (don’t throw it away though). This is how things should look like by now:

Now, using your fingers shape and curve the third strip and the left piece of the second one in the following manner:

Start gluing the strips to the outer edge of the shadow box in the same way you did for the inside edge – bit by bit.

Cut off the access:

This is how it will look like after you’re done both with the outer and the inside edge:

Apply the adhesive on the folded snips as follows:

Now attach this piece to the circle with the eyelets and the thread. Take your time!! Although the adhesive is quick-dry, you’ll have enough time to straighten everything up while paying attention to the edge. Make it as perfect as you can J

Now comes the fun part – embellishing! Die cut the cogs of different colors using the various La-La Land Crafts dies. I’ve cut out a Steampunk Clock as well:

Since the clock is quite delicate, I’ve backed it up with an acetate sheet using Glossy Accents:

Start to place the cogs inside the shadow box (without gluing them down yet), have a look at your project, arrange the cogs the way you like and only after that start to glue them down.

*I’ve doubled the most of the cogs with plain white cardstock.

The first layer of cogs that you see here are glued down with the simple glue:

And those on top, are glued with the tiny pieces of mounting tape for achieving a 3D effect: